


Five Loves in Jaxon Halsing's Life

by Care



Category: Summers at Castle Auburn - Sharon Shinn
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-24
Updated: 2008-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-25 05:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1634774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Care/pseuds/Care
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he saw the Faelyn River, he was ten and a boy still with a thin face and closely-cropped hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Loves in Jaxon Halsing's Life

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Lesserstorm.
> 
> To the recipient -- it started off being the story of Jaxon and Rowena and morphed into something that wasn't that at all. I hope you enjoy it anyway. Also, I wasn't sure if the book had talked about how the aliora came to be enslaved or what the history of that was, so I made it up. I'm sorry if it's been refuted by canon (I don't remember reading that though).

**

1\. The first time he saw the Faelyn River, he was ten and a boy still with a thin face and closely-cropped hair. He did not ride particularly fast or well; he did not bear any outstanding qualities. Those things were better left to his elder brother, Liam, the one that would inherit the estate. Jaxon was brash and hotheaded, their father often said, and patience had to be bred.

There was nothing that left its definite imprint on Jaxon, nothing until the sight of the river and its foaming waters, the astonishing blue of it that looked brighter than chipped ice. He could have stared at it his whole life, the river and the pearlescent sky above it. He could have slept on the banks of the river and never been lonely for the rushing sound, the bubbling echoes, were companion enough.

**

2\. He could have not said that the aliora were real. He did not believe it. Fairy tales, he would have said, like the ones his nursemaid told him and his brother when they were young and scared of the storm outside. He would not have believed that they really existed with their delicate features, so beautiful that the loveliest human woman couldn't compare his nurse said, and their lilting voices.

But the stories enchanted him until he was woven so tightly in their net that he couldn't escape, no matter how he twisted and turned. He could not let go of the what-ifs.

"And where is Alora?" Jaxon would demand imperiously of his nurse. "Tell me where it is!"

She clucked her tongue and smoothed down his stubborn hair. "No one knows, love, but they say it's rumored to be across the Faelyn River, deep in the shelter of the woods."

"Have you ever seen them? The aliora?" he asked her, hands clutching at her skirts.

"Not myself, but others I knew had. Just glimpses, little ones, and a man from my village set out to try to seek them and he never returned," she told him. "Bewitched and kidnapped."

Liam always laughed. "Don't listen to such nonsense, Jaxon," he said. "It's just fanciful."

They often returned to the banks of the Faelyn River though, and there was a particular clearing that Jaxon found to be the most appealing. He gathered dayigs and ate them there, slicing them in pieces with his pocketknife, and consuming the fruit piece by piece, savoring them until the rich taste dissolved on his tongue like a memory of sweetness.

He wore gold because the stories told him to, a necklace on a chain so thin that he was afraid he would snap it in his sleep. But he wanted the aliora to come to him, so he did not dare wear more.

**

3\. Jaxon's first glimpse of an aliora was nothing to write home about. It was quiet and peaceful and like slipping into a deep sleep. He did not think that it would change his life, but of course it did. But it was because, when he saw the creature, he could not remember never seeing them before. Because the aliora had always been with him even though he hadn't realized it.

He thought his eyes were playing tricks on him, but he could see it -- the woman that stood in the very dark, pale skin stark against the night. She watched him and he watched her back, drowning in her, until she stepped away. He would forever remember the arch of her nose, her small rounded shoulders, the long thinness of her arms. In his mind, he named her "Ethereal".

She was his first aliora, the first one he paraded back to Castle Auburn. He shackled her and said nothing when she wept bitter tears at the pain of metal. He didn't allow her to touch him. She earned him enough money to retire on, but he wasn't satisfied as such. He wanted more than just that.

**

4\. Rowena was the only aliora he never would have sold, even if she had asked. For her, he would have been selfish, but then it seemed that he did not need to be.

She was selfish and magnanimous both, and though he wanted her reasons for marrying him to be all for her own feelings for him, he could not help but admire her for the sacrifice.

Sometimes he asked himself if she had indeed enchanted him, but then again he realized that he had been enchanted long before they met. Her kisses made him burn with incandescent fire. She was a woman that wasn't a woman, but she was humanity.

**

5\. Corie understood the aliora better than he did for all his claims. She was tenderhearted, Jaxon knew, and he kept his ears open for news of her during Kent's long and peaceful reign. The aliora did not approach Auburn again, not even when no more hunters appeared on the banks of the river and in the forest searching for Alora, and day-by-day he found himself growing fainter and yet more solid, a paradox he hadn't believed was possible until it happened.

"What am I becoming?" he asked Rowena at night, nuzzled against her lithe and sleek body.

She placed her hand on his cheek and stroked his face. "What you are," she said, lips curving into a smile that he kissed and then there was nothing else to say.

One morning he woke up and walked to the edge of the riverbank, waiting for something he didn't know. But then he saw his niece, flyaway hair streaked with gray, aged but still unmistakably Corie. He held out his hand and she gathered her skirts, crossed the river. She had nothing with her.

"Uncle Jaxon," she said breathlessly and threw her arms around his neck.

"I've been waiting for you," he said, and touched the point of her chin with a smile. "Come." He offered her the crook of his arm. "I will take you home." 

 


End file.
